Recently I found myself wanting to try my hand at creating some fanart, using Ariel as an image reference. I have a high-resolution capable optical mouse, and a stylus/tablet..

Both methods ended in resounding failure. ugly lines that bore no resemblance to the reference image, even in the 'misshapen blob/stick figure' category. For several years in the past I'd tried my hand at using pencils (colored and otherwise), yet I could never get things quite the way I wanted, even after I'd worn packs of pencils down to the nub. I have good hand-eye coordination, yet what I put down on paper isn't at all what I see it looking like in my head..Plus I get bad hand cramping early on. There was a time where I came close...Yet my attempts at putting in humanlike detail - making the figure I was drawing look like a person - resulted in ugliness, and I could never do hands or faces at all.

I actually went and scanned a rough sketch I did in about 10-15 minutes. I've been rather out of practice and It didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I'd used an image here on DT as a reference (I did -not- trace...just visual reference):

Seraphiel wrote:Yeah, that's my whole issue I think.. proportions for me all make sense locally, but when you look at the big picture, things end up looking lopsided or off-scale.

Try to do the body outline just to see.

hmm, spent some time watching people draw at iScribble.com - many thanks to Hellsion for the reference! - and I figured that my freeform drawing - sketching things without any frames of reference in place - was hurting me big time. gonna hook up the art tablet soon to see if I can do it.

Seraphiel wrote:Yeah, that's my whole issue I think.. proportions for me all make sense locally, but when you look at the big picture, things end up looking lopsided or off-scale.

Try to do the body outline just to see.

hmm, spent some time watching people draw at iScribble.com - many thanks to Hellsion for the reference! - and I figured that my freeform drawing - sketching things without any frames of reference in place - was hurting me big time. gonna hook up the art tablet soon to see if I can do it.

As far as drawing cartoons and anime style people I go by something my favorite teacher in college told me. 'To cartoon something is to manipulate the truth of their form, in order to manipulate the truth you must fully understand the truth first."

Look at 'how to's for drawing real people. And pay attention to proportions and such. Once you have basics memorized such as....wear the upper ear attatches to the head is even with the corner of the eyes, if you draw a line from the center of the eyes they will touch the corners of the mouth, there is approxomately 'one eye' distance between your eyes, the span of your shoulders is around twice the height of your skull.....okay I'll stop

But those small basics allow for more freedom to create unique characters. Rather then memorizing exactly how to draw a head and a face you can make changes to individual elements and follow those loose guidelines. Then as you draw all your characters will have their own look and personality. (Shaping and sizing of one or two things like the eyes, mouth, or nose of a character in comparison to another can change a facial structure completely but it doesn't alter the method, so you'll be able to draw different characters more easily and only by remembering those small features about them you can draw them more than once consistantly.)

As for inking digitally though...freehanding I suck at it. But this trick I found works nicely I'll start with a sketch either scanned in or drawn in photoshop and move on to what I learned here.